Teamcenter is a powerful, but highly buggy tool. It would be great if it were to get significant attention from Siemens to fix the problems and make it work right.
February 23, 2019
Teamcenter is a powerful, but highly buggy tool. It would be great if it were to get significant attention from Siemens to fix the problems and make it work right.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Siemens PLM Software
We use Teamcenter throughout NOV, as our main PLM/EDC tool.
- Teamcenter tracks & creates revisions pretty well, but that is after much customization we've done to it.
- Quite a bit of search power, although very complicated and challenging to use the search features.
- A database that can be integrated with ERP systems, but that does require much code writing and an SOA system.
- Document security -- not sure if these features are out-of-the-box or customizations, but this capability is highly valuable to protect IP.
- Teamcenter is highly buggy, and most bugs are very time consuming to live with. Many bugs have existed for a long time and Siemens has yet to fix them. Examples are extremely slow response for the Windows Explorer plug-in used for adding datasets for document items, views in the viewer getting "stuck" and won't clear even after a full window refresh - solution currently is to close the viewer and reopen it, or sometimes close & reopen Teamcenter; functions that fail one way but work another, such as Teamcenter will freeze up when selecting "save and check in" after an item data edit, but will work fine if the user saves and then does a "right click - check in." Many more examples exist too numerous to list here.
- Teamcenter is too complex and non-intuitive. This causes a need for a lot of training, and refresh training. Occasional users really struggle because of this, and require a lot of hand-holding by support or admin folks.
- Also highly unstable, particularly the Java portion, at the Client level. We get a lot of Java errors or Java related errors (some users almost daily - no exaggeration). Java never closes on its own after a user closes Teamcenter, which is normally not a problem unless Teamcenter inadvertently creates a second instance of Java, or otherwise crashes. Also, sometimes apparently related, the various cache folders on the Client machine get corrupt and require the user to clean them out after closing Teamcenter (unless it had already crashed) and restart Teamcenter - this every week or two per user, depending on usage. This all seems to be worse with Windows 10, so perhaps there's a Teamcenter - Java - Windows 10 compatibility issue.
- Because of the issues mentioned above, Teamcenter requires an inordinate amount of support personnel. We have an entire corporate department dedicated to supporting Teamcenter, and local users who serve as local admins and support.
- Teamcenter is a very expensive to use, because of the issues expressed here. Many, many man-hours per year are spent supporting this tool, and many, many more man-hours are spent just on dealing with delays due to bugs and inefficiencies.
- I believe, based on observation, that for our facility, Teamcenter has had a negative impact, overall. Some things are improved, and with the complexity comes some sophisticated benefit, but the benefits do not outweigh the negative impact on productivity.
We were required to change to Siemens Teamcenter because that was the choice at the corporate level, and then driven down to the facility level.
There's no comparison with our "homegrown" software, which was tailored to a sophisticated document control system and process with built-in review rigor and signoff tracking, reporting that was highly useful to team leaders and managers, and nearly seamless integration with our ERP/MRP system.
There's no comparison with our "homegrown" software, which was tailored to a sophisticated document control system and process with built-in review rigor and signoff tracking, reporting that was highly useful to team leaders and managers, and nearly seamless integration with our ERP/MRP system.